


something a loser would say

by deusreks



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Banter, Boys Thinking They Are Sneaky, First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 14:05:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7511206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deusreks/pseuds/deusreks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>“Unbelievable. Lance agrees with me.”<br/>“I’d agree with you more if you said agreeable things more often.” Lance grins; the kind of grin that would’ve gotten him in trouble back on Earth. But here, in this floating castle and a dangling room of glass, it earns him Keith’s shadowy smile. </p>
</blockquote>Or, Keith and Lance share a hiding spot.
            </blockquote>





	something a loser would say

“Since we have some free time—“

“We don’t—“ “We should be practicing—“ “I’d rather—“ “I’m leaving—“

“—I thought we could play an ancient earthling game,” Lance announces, unperturbed by the avalanche of groans and complaints coming from his fellow paladins.

Princess Allura regards him with a few curious blinks and encourages him to pursue this. She asks, “An ancient earthling game?”

“Allow me to explain, princess.”

Lance strolls over to her, flashing a grin so smug that Shiro sighs and crosses his arms, Keith and Pidge raise a dubious eyebrow in unison and Hunk makes three steps towards the kitchen door where Coran is preparing dinner goo that is, supposedly, supposed to blow their mind.

“One person, the hunter, closes their eyes and counts to one hundred. The rest, the hunted, find a place to hide. If the hunter manages to find them, the hunter wins. And if the hunter can’t find them and gives up, the hunted win.”

“You want us to play hide and seek,” Keith says, irritation seeping into his words. Lance can tell, without looking at him, that he has rolled his eyes.

“I’m leaving,” Pidge concludes with a decisive wave of hand.

“It’s a bonding exercise,” Lance explains, paying them no heed and focusing on convincing Princess Allura of the nobleness of his cause.

Keith interrupts him yet again, “We’ve bonded plenty recently.”

“No, I’m intrigued,” Princess Allura says, pensive, something coiling behind her bright eyes. Then, she looks up at Lance. “Let’s play.”

“Would you like to be the hunter first, Princess?”

“Absolutely!”

Though the rest of the Paladins erupt into another stream of sighing and muttering, they scatter as soon as Princess Allura begins to count. Lance bolts past everyone, making sure Keith notices his confidence in the hiding place he has in mind. With a pattering of footsteps behind him, Lance runs down a white corridor until he reaches a U-turn. There, where the glass window meets wall, Lance presses an invisible button and, beneath him, a trapdoor opens. He descends with the grace he didn’t have a couple of days ago when he tripped on his bathrobe and triggered the trapdoor which mercilessly swallowed him whole and caused him to emit a shameful, high-pitched scream that still rings in his ears.

The trapdoor leads into a tiny sitting space, long enough that Lance can stretch his legs without bending his knees, and wide enough to hold Lance and perhaps someone of Pidge’s size. The hatch overhead closes with a soft _wrrrrr,_ but he is not in the pitch darkness. The floor and the walls around him are windows to the galaxy beyond; a myriad of stars flicker before his eyes in languages he does not dream to ever understand. The first time he came here, he thought of his siblings and how they would’ve pressed their pert little noses to the glass and said _whoa_ in their most astonished voices. Lance has no idea what the names of these stars are but he’d make them up just to see those innocent flickers of awe in their eyes.

The second time he came here – after finishing dinner and beating Keith by three whole mouthfuls –he thought of Keith’s competitive eyes darting to his face, seeing nothing else, and how a piece of green-whatever was stuck to the corner of his thin mouth which could’ve caused Lance to lose if he had given into the loud, desperate urge to wipe it off with his thumb.

Lance comes here when he doesn’t wish to be seen.

He imagines this is what the place was originally designed for and that’s why its existence is kept secret. If Princess Allura thinks nobody knows about it, she wouldn’t think to search for anybody here. And that is where ingenuity of Lance’s plan lies. His total and complete victory over Ke—

The hatch above opens and somebody lands on Lance’s head, forcing him to scoot over into the corner to save his neck from cramping or breaking.

The hatch above closes and that somebody has to throw his lanky leg over Lance’s knee in order to fit into place that is no longer small and cosy, but stifling and tense. That somebody with a damn mullet and genuine shock splayed over his face is none other than Keith.

“Lance?” Keith questions, cheeks washed in pale starlight.

“ _No_ , uh- _uh_.” Lance shakes his head, trying to back further into the corner because Keith’s leg is heavy and unmoving on his own. This is the place where he stays away from whatever is outside and whatever-is-outside has no business coming here. “I was here first, Keith.”

“I’m not leaving now.” Keith’s voice is close; any closer and his lips would brush Lance’s ear. Lance forces the thought out of his head. Keith doesn’t notice and concludes, “I will be found.”

“Should’ve thought of that before you came into my hiding place.” Lance puts such heavy emphasis on _my_ that his tongue hurts.

“ _Your_ hiding place?”

Lance crosses his arms, ready to fight in order to have his way. “When did you find this place?”

Keith ponders for a second, his slender finger touching his chin. He says, “A long time ago.”

“Well, I found it a long _er_ time ago. So scram.”

Lance, aware that he’s acting childish beyond the usual level, locks eyes with Keith. Unlike the sharp tension stealing air from this already cramped room, Keith’s expression has gone soft like it seldom does when he’s gazing in the distance, at nothing in particular, deep in thought and untouchable. Heat creeps up underneath Lance’s shirt merely by being on the receiving end of it.

Lance has no choice but to concede with an exasperated sigh. “Fine, I don’t care anymore.” His head falls back on the cold glass. In the distance, a star flickers. “What do you think is the purpose of this place?”

“Most likely meant for Princess Allura when she was a child. It’s private and cozy.” Keith’s eyes lock onto the star-splashed vastness on the other side of the glass. “The view is breath-taking.”

“Can’t deny it’s beautiful,” Lance murmurs, his breath forming a foggy patch on the glass. He misses his chance to draw an emoji sticking its tongue out at Keith.

“Unbelievable.” There’s a tinge of taunt in Keith’s tone. His eyes find Lance’s face again. He says, “Lance agrees with me.”

“I’d agree with you more if you said agreeable things more often.” Lance grins; the kind of grin that would’ve gotten him in trouble back on Earth. But here, in this floating castle and a dangling room of glass, it earns him Keith’s shadowy smile.

“Do you think you’ll ever get sick of it?” Keith asks, pensive, his voice dipping into a half-whisper. “Of the view, I mean.”

“I wanted to be a pilot _because_ I knew I could never get sick of it.”

The corner of Keith’s lip quirks up just a crack and Lance feels the tips of his ears warm. Outside of these glass walls, it’s easy to shrug off Keith’s presence; in here, Keith is everywhere. The thing is, Lance has always had his feet stuck firmly on the ground but, he thought as early as when he was seven years old, from above he could watch over and protect everything and everyone he cared about. It’s a simple yet overpowering longing within him that he doesn’t want exposed and abused.

“Surprisingly romantic,” Keith says, not a tinge of teasing in his words.

“I am plenty romantic.”

“Of course you are.” A tinge of teasing is there now.

Those four simple words twist something within Lance. He becomes sensation and acute awareness of closeness to another body. Not just any body – Keith’s. It’s Keith’s leg that lies over his. Their shoulders touch through layers of clothes. The stars outside match the stars reflected in Keith’s eyes. Keith’s lips, slightly parted, call for attention. Lance counts the millimeters separating them from his own lips.

“You’re staring at my mouth,” Keith murmurs.

Lance blinks rapidly. Keith’s mouth goes out of focus so that the rest of his face can come into focus. “I’m— _what_?”

“My mouth.”

“Oh, _now_ you get perceptive?” Lance defends himself with nowhere to hide to his burning face. “You can’t even do the ‘ _I say Vol- and you say_ ’ and suddenly you’re telling me—”

Keith makes a decisive shift of his body towards Lance, his knee crawling up Lance’s thigh. He tilts his head, heavy-lidded eyes landing on Lance’s lips as he says, “Tron.”

It’s like being called out on a bluff. Lance inhales the air between their lips and kisses Keith with all determination he could muster. Keith gasps into the kiss but doesn’t pull away. Lance’s heartbeat stutters when Keith’s fingers thread into his hair, drawing them closer as if there’s still some distance left to close. It’s everything Lance has allowed himself to imagine in the most intimate moments of his life; when he’s gliding down into his Lion or when he’s lying in his bed facing the shared wall between his and Keith’s rooms.

The moments becomes more. Keith’s thumb is on Lance’s throat, his own hand is on the knee touching his leg. For a brief second, in the silence between the smacks of their lips and sharp inhales of breath, Lance wonders if the magic of his room is playing with his mind. To have Keith kiss him, touch him, and swallow his gasps could've been written off as a hallucination. But the smell of Keith’s hair and the taste of his mouth are so heady and _real_ that they made Lance lightheaded.  

Then, a sound. _Wrrrrrr_. The trapdoor overhead opens, illuminating their faces with artificial light. Princess Allura sticks her head in, regarding them both with curious eyes.

“Is that also a part of the game?” She inquires once their breathing has calmed somewhat, but not enough to hide what has just transpired.

Lance wants to look away, break the glass and float into space. But he can’t. Keith is still looking at him, his eyes blown wide and terrified. Lance’s chest feels tight, foreign.

“Uh,” he stalls, words escaping him one by one. “It can be.”

Princess Allura tilts her head.

✫ ✬ ✭ ✮ ✯ 

 

Lance knows he’s raising suspicion when he sneaks around, peers behind walls and treats Keith like plague on legs. Worst of all is that Keith acts as though nothing has happened even as Lance does a double take whenever he enters the room or when he eats after everybody has already eaten, or not at all. He can’t tell how much time passes in playing this incredibly real game of hide and seek, but it exhausts him pretty fast and he’s only a few ticks away before Hunk or Pidge call him out on his behavior.

Needing a moment of respite, Lance goes to the not-so-secret-anymore room. Glass and stars. He breathes slowly, inhales even slower. His mind wanders to the significance and greatness of their galactic mission and how his feelings for Keith are just as significant and great. Why did he have to kiss him? Why did Keith kiss him back and then say nothing besides “I’m going to bed,” while Princess Allura celebrated her flawless victory. Their connection as Paladins is endangered and all because—

 _Wrrrrrr_.

Light pours from overhead.

It’s Keith who drops down, much like yesterday, and flings his leg over Lance’s. The gesture has a different meaning today, like it’s meant to keep him in place instead of annoy him. The room is small, Lance’s heartbeat is large.

“You,” Lance says.

Keith leans in, shoulder pressing into Lance’s. “Me.”

Lance scoffs. It doesn’t have punch. “I beat you to it.”

“It’s not a competition.”

“Sounds like something a loser would say.”

Keith laughs like he’s never laughed before, all teeth and shortage of air. Lance doesn’t dare interrupt it, instead, he records the sound in his mind so he can replay it over and over and over. 

“Don’t run from me,” Keith says as if he didn't laugh at all just moments ago.

Lance stubbornly points his nose to the ceiling. “I’m not running.”

“Of course you’re not.” If Keith were an alien, sarcasm would be his mother tongue. “I’m just imagining you sneaking around, peering behind walls, and treating me like plague with legs.”

Lance gives him the stink eye like he’s wrong, like he has no other way to hide how confused he is. “I’m not running,” he repeats. “I’m merely avoiding.”

“Avoiding what?”

“ _This_. Listen, I saw your face after the—the kiss.” Lance gives the word _kiss_ the power to take him back to the press of Keith’s lips against his, responding and inviting, and then the scene flickers into the depths of horror in Keith’s eyes. He continues, “And I just want you to know that if you were a little curious—I mean I’d be curious to kiss myself too—it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

“I was surprised at how much I liked it. I only realized what it was that I felt a minute before we kissed.” Keith says it like Lance’s train of thought offends him. “Do you really think I’d just let you kiss me if I didn’t want it? And kiss you back because I was... curious?”

“Well.” Lance gives him his finest noncommittal shrug in response. “Yes.”

Keith scoffs. “You’re an idiot.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“Takes one to know one who knows one.”

They stare at each other like cowboys at noon. Their poker-faces crack at the same time and they laugh, the room too stuffed to contain the pure sound of relief. Lance, chest light and bubbly and brave, lays his hand at the back of Keith’s neck, twirling a strand of black hair around his index finger.

“So... It’s okay?”

“Everything’s okay,” Keith says. “It’s even okay to kiss me again.”

“How generous,” Lance whispers, leaning in to brush his lips against Keith’s.

Keith grins, all mischief and childlike wonder. “Don’t get used to it.”

They kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> I was binge-watching Mentalist when I started writing this and the 6th season was so filled with secret rooms underneath trapdoors that it was only logical to give my favorite Voltron boys one (along with a cheesy setup that guarantees awkwardness while also justifying making-out). My hand slipped. I hope you enjoyed either way.


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